Ragged Edges
by bastioned
Summary: Somehow losing everyone you cared about hurts more when you can't even remember what you've lost. [Oneshot] [Kairi]


"Hey, are you okay? Kairi? _Kairi_!"

Kairi blinks awake to see Selphie's upside-down face grinning down at her. "What're doing sleeping out here on the island? Sheesh, sometimes you're as weird as— well, _really_ weird. What'd you do, row out here in your sleep?"

Kairi just stares back at her, trying to remember something important. She'd been dreaming, maybe, except it must have been longer and more complicated than any dream she's ever had, and— she raises a hand to her face, feels fresh tears on her cheeks.

...her dreams _never_ make her cry.

Selphie ducks down, waves a hand in her face. "Earth to Kairi! C'mon, your parents are worried, they've probably got half the town out looking for you by now."

Kairi lets the other girl pull her to her feet, and follows her without protest, her mind elsewhere. Something's wrong, she knows, and she feels horrible for not remembering something important.

There was a promise. She made a promise to someone important to her, and she kind of thinks she's already broken it by forgetting, but Selphie's dragging her along and babbling and laughing and she can think about it later, right? Because right now she's just really glad to be home, even if she's pretty sure she's never left her hometown in her life.

For days afterwards the people she meets seem vaguely distracted, like they're not entirely sure what they're supposed to be doing. If you ask them what happened the week before they can't answer, or mumble something about meteor showers and strange storms. Which is just silly. _That_ night was ages and ages ago, before— before something happened, horrible and wonderful and ripped from her memories, leaving only a jagged hole behind.

But soon enough things get less weird, or Kairi just accepts the way things are now, the days so ordinary it almost hurts and her nights full of other worlds. She guesses there's nothing so weird that you can get used to it after a while, even dreams as strange as hers.

Once, though, she dreams of somewhere dark, a strange mechanical castle and a cold-voiced boy-man who isn't what he seems to be, and she sits up in bed mouthing a name. A minute later she's flung on the first clothes that come to hand and set out running, and she doesn't realized she's forgotten her shoes until she's knocking on a door on the other side of town, feeling like an idiot

"_Riku_," she pants when the door opens. "I remember now."

The woman in the doorway shoves sleep-mussed pale hair out of her eyes and blinks wearily back at her. "I— what? Kairi, honey, what are you doing here in the middle of the night?"

"Riku," Kairi says again biting back an inexplicable panic. "He used to live here, right? He's not part of some story I made up?"

"He—" she shakes her head. "Riku went away," she recites as if by rote. And then, with a sigh, "come inside, why don't you? Can't have you sleepwalking around by yourself, or whatever you were doing."

Kairi follows her into the house, and sits down at the kitchen table with the glass of milk the woman forces on her while she makes coffee. "He always did talk about going somewhere else," she says suddenly, and Kairi looks up. "Can't say I blame him, really. Guess he got what he wanted."

"That's not true," says Kairi, surprised at her own fierceness. "He's heading home right now, I know he is. Maybe he used to want to leave here more than anything, but he's different now. He'll come back someday, just like— like—" She trails off, frowning slightly. Just like _who_?

Riku's mom just smiles tiredly at her over her coffee mug, but at least the smile seems real now.

(There was someone else once who was good at making people smile, but that thought slips out of her mind as quickly at it entered.)

After that night remembering Riku isn't hard anymore, and it's like he's brought him back for everyone else, too. Which is good, because Riku doesn't deserve to just be forgotten like that – he would hate it, proud as he always was – except Kairi can't shake the feeling that there's something else she's still missing.

She still has the dreams, and the boy in them isn't Riku, even if she can never see his face.

One day she wakes up in the middle of a class she really shouldn't have fallen asleep in, and his name is almost on the tip of her tongue. She jabs Tidus in the side and demands in a whisper that he tell her who the other boy they used to spar with was, but he just gapes at her until the teacher clears his throat and suggests that some of the class might like to pay attention.

None of her other friends are any help, either, and his name never comes back to her. Kairi can't remember where he lived, what he looked like, just that he existed. And for all she knows, she's making that up too, and he's just some imaginary friend she used to have when she was little. Riku would probably tease her about him, if he wasn't off wherever he is.

That's just a cheap excuse though. She _knows_ he's real, if only because she so desperately wants him to be.

And lately her dreams are haunted by a town where the sky never changes and the sun is always setting, and a boy who— a girl who— they're no one in particular. Just some kids she doesn't know.

Except they make her think of _him_, somehow, and it's like she can feel the gaps in her mind knitting themselves back together.

They made a promise to each other, didn't they? That they'd meet again, no matter what?

She'll find him again, find both of them, if she has to go looking herself this time.


End file.
